The reforms of the 90’s and their economic, political and legal impacts

Introduction: the paper demonstrates the impact of the 1990s reforms on the current state of the Russian economy and political and legal system of the country. Purpose: to analyze the real causes and the logic of the reformers’ activities, to identify the triggers for the emergence and accumulation of crucial problems of modern Russia. Methods: the methodological frame-work of the research is based on philosophy of materialism, dialectics (development, universal communication, determinism, contradiction), general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Results: the negative implications of the reforms were predetermined by the nature and specific method of their implementation, dictated by economic and political interests of the reform-ers and their handlers. The negative implications of the reforms took the form of economic decline and inefficiency of political and legal institutions. Moreover, the reforms intensified the alienation in different areas of society: alienation of property from the owner, alienation of power from the people, alienation of law from executors. The reforms and method of their implementation were a manifestation of legal nihilism, which sometimes was covert, sometimes not. As a result, Russian society acquired a parasitic form of oligarchic capitalism as the basis and essentially one-party political system, based on the authority of the leader, as the superstructure. This or-ganization of society dramatically increases the importance of subjective factors in public life, risk of political destabilization and danger of collapse of the state. Conclusions: the reforms threw Russia back to the category of semi-periphery countries. For an adequate response to modern challenges, our society needs to get a self-sufficient high-technology economy, settled and full-fledged political and legal system, mutual trust between the government and the people as a con-dition of consolidation. It requires an ideology different from that of the reformers’ followers.